


a slow landslide

by morallygreywaren



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: (also Andy and Quynh but it's complicated), (although that's also complicated), (that's Booker and Nile), (that's Joe and Nicky), Angst with a Happy Ending, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Kelpies, Multi, POV Nile Freeman, Scottish Folklore & Mythology, Scottish Myths, lots of thoughts are had on immortality, rated mature for some mild gore later on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:01:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27963449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morallygreywaren/pseuds/morallygreywaren
Summary: She watches Andy disappear into the night, half-expecting either Nicky or Joe to stop her or at least put up a fight, but they both do the same. And then they turn to her.“Nile.” Nicky’s voice is quiet, but it doesn’t sound as calm as it usually does. “Please tell us what happened last night.”When Nile's dreams about Quynh change shortly after they exile Booker, Andy takes her team up to a loch in Scotland and disappears to sit at the shore. As Nile works with Joe and Nicky to unpack what's going on, it becomes clear that she might be in way over her head - as if the immortality thing wasn't enough.A found family adventure.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nile Freeman
Comments: 70
Kudos: 168





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The story is finished, but I'm tidying up the next couple of chapters before I'll post them.
> 
> This is very loosely inspired by the _Loch Dormant_ sleepcast on the Headspace app. (I say loosely because I keep falling asleep midway through the damn thing.) I thought this would be a good bedtime story, but I haven't quite managed to stay under 10k as I'd hoped.
> 
> Title is from 'Underwater' by MIKA, because... well. That would be spoilers, no? ([full 'playlist' here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7wZgXnS0PLHp8WbKWAoEPH))

Nile’s breath barely hitches when she startles awake. She’s getting better at this. Across the room, Nicky and Joe are curled around each other, still asleep, a lone moon beam illuminating Nicky’s features. 

Earlier that evening, Andy saw her looking at them when she joined Nile in the other double bed and asked: “Want me to hold you?”

Quiet, and matter of fact, but the way a friend would. Nile nearly said, “You don’t _need_ to,” because it’s true. She doesn’t need Andy to hold her. But she can’t quite put in words how looking at Joe and Nicky makes her feel – not lonely, exactly, but some strange emotion that threatens to fill her heart enough it might as well break, anyway – and she was glad Andy understood without words. Wrapped her arm around Nile’s middle before she could say anything.

“What did you dream about?” 

The hand on her hip tightens almost imperceptibly, and Nile stifles a curse. Of course, she can’t say for certain that she woke Andy up, seeing as the woman never seems to fall asleep in the first place, but she still promises herself she won’t so much as move next time it happens.

Nile drags her eyes away from Nicky and Joe at the other end of the room and looks at her hands instead. They’re balled into fists around her phone. 

“I’m not sure,” she whispers, so low she isn’t sure Andy can hear, “I thought it was about-“ _Quynh_ , she wants to say, but for some reason she still can’t speak the name around Andy. The look on her face when Nicky and Joe told Nile about their lost sister still haunts her. “But it was different than the ones before.”

“How?”

Nile closes her eyes to recollect the images dancing in front of her eyes moments ago. “It wasn’t- There was no iron coffin,” she says, pausing at Andy’s audible intake of breath. “But I didn’t see her, either. There was just a horse. A tall, black horse galloping along the shore of a lake. But it felt the same. Like it was furious, somehow insane. Like all it wanted was revenge.”

“What did the lake look like?” Andy’s voice is level, but Nile knows when someone’s working hard to make it sound that way.

“I don’t know. It was very still. And I think there were mountains in the background, and it all looked sort of green, I guess.”

Andy doesn’t say anything in response and Nile isn’t sure there’s anything she could add to prompt her. The dream was hazy yet intense, the way all her dreams about the other immortals have been since she started having them, but something about it makes her feel like Andy is right to dig deeper. Only surely there isn’t a new immortal _horse_ out there somewhere. There can’t be. The others would dream of it, too, in any case.

Nile is half asleep again when Andy’s hand slips off her waist and the bed dips. A part of her wants to turn, to reach out and demand what she’s doing, she’s mortal now, goddamnit, but even so, there seems to be little point in denying Andy her little night-time haunts. And so she goes back to sleep.

“Nile.” Nicky is gently shaking her awake. A quick look at the clock on her nightstand and Joe’s sleeping form on the other bed confirm that it is, indeed, only the early hours of the morning, and not nearly time for her to get up yet, now that she isn’t a marine anymore. “Nile, where is Andy?”

Nile blinks up at Nicky, his eyes full of concern, and suppresses a groan. She likes Nicky a lot, truly, but her understanding of an emergency and his understanding of an emergency always seem to be at two diametrically opposed ends of a spectrum.

“I don’t know,” she says. “She got up at some point in the middle of the night, I didn’t ask.”

Nicky looks to the door.

They are staying with Copley at his house in Surrey. He insisted, after he agreed to work for them, to at least make sure Andy recovered fully before they took on any new mission. It has only been a few days, but Andy still seems to be healing a little faster than humans normally do after a gunshot wound. 6,000 years of immortality are bound to leave some aftereffects, Nile supposes. There’s still blood on the carpet in Copley’s living room though.

“Nicky?” Joe’s voice is sleep-laden, his long fingers patting the empty mattress next to him.

Nile pokes her finger in Nicky’s thigh. “Go back to bed,” she says. “Andy will be fine.”

What is she going to do, tear up the English countryside in the middle of the night? Besides, she has tried that already.

Nicky looks over at Joe, and nods, once, before padding over to their side of the room. There is a warm echo of his hand on Nile’s shoulder, and it’s hours before she wakes again.

Andy is sitting at the kitchen table with Copley when Nile goes downstairs to find herself some breakfast. She is about to raise a triumphant eyebrow at Nicky, who is leaning against a kitchen counter next to Joe and listening to their conversation, but something in his posture, in his and Joe’s expression makes her pause.

She hasn’t seen them look so stern since the moment Andy told Copley he was now working for them. And she’s never seen them look that way at _Andy_.

“Morning, Nile,” Andy says when she spots her, and pushes the basket with pastries and some fruit that Copley always puts out for breakfast in her direction. “Grab something to eat. We’re going on a road trip.”

That explains Joe and Nicky’s thunderous faces. Nile half expects them to argue with Andy, but instead both of them just raise their eyes to look at her, followed by Copley.

“Oh-kay,” Nile says as she slides into a seat at the table. “Where to?”

Nile isn’t completely opposed to the idea of a road trip, or at least not as long as it doesn’t become a mission midway through. She hasn’t been with the others for centuries and centuries, but she can already tell that this is going to be a theme. Maybe that’s why Nicky and Joe seem less than thrilled with Andy. It’s just that Nile thought road trips weren’t really a thing in the UK. She’s sure she’s read somewhere that it’s impossible to be any further than a two hour drive from the sea on this island, so she’s not sure where they would go.

“You’ll see when we get there,” Andy says, and pushes herself up. “Help me with the car, Copley?”

Copley’s face has what Nile has secretly come to think of as his ‘old-family-dog-not-happy-with-the-new-puppies’ expression, but he follows her without another word. There is a deep line between Nicky’s eyebrows as he watches them leave, and Nile knows he’s having a wordless conversation with Joe as she tucks into her breakfast before he goes after them.

Joe sighs with the air of someone who has said all they are going to say on a topic, then grabs the cafetière and joins Nile at the table.

“Coffee?” he offers. “Might be a long day. Or couple of days.”

There are a lot of questions Nile should probably ask. A week or so ago she would have. She’d have demanded answers, refused to do anything or go anywhere until people explained themselves to her. Not that it had worked, with Andy, or with Booker. She still had to figure everything out for herself at the end.

And Nile is nothing but a fast learner. Maybe Joe would tell her what Nicky is concerned about, where he thinks they’re going and what they discussed while she was still asleep if she asks him now. But he’ll probably do that sooner or later anyway, without the need for her to press. “All in good time” appears to be the motto the other three live by, only what that _means_ for them she has yet to figure out. She only hopes she manages to do that before she starts looking like Copley.

An hour later, Nile finds herself in the backseat of a rental car Copley must have pulled some strings to procure, the few belongings she’d come with in a small carry-on in the trunk. She would have sat in the front, but Andy is driving and insisted Nicky give her directions.

“Where to, boss?” he asks, rummaging through his backpack for a map of the UK, but Andy only smiles at him. “I’ll tell you when we’re close.”

“The car has a GPS,” Nile feels compelled to point out when the line of concern creeps back between Nicky’s eyebrows. “You can just use that.”

Andy turns to smile at her over her shoulder, and immortality or not, Nile wishes she would look at the road. “That’s not going to get us where we’re going.”

“Are you going to tell us where it is we’re going?” Joe has been looking out of the window for the entire drive so far, but now leans forward, his elbows on Nicky and Andy’s backrest.

“Yes,” Andy says.

“Can you tell us now?” Nicky presses, and Nile knows she would crumble in an instant under the combined weight of their stares. But not so Andy. Her smile is undeterred, her hands loose on the steering wheel.

“You’ll see when we get there.”

Joe throws himself back into his seat and resumes gazing out of the window, and Nile is left looking between the three of them and wondering, not for the first time, what exactly it is she got signed up for.

The immortality part is one thing, sure, but so far she’s died a total of four, maybe five times, and she very much still _feels_ like she’s 26. She hasn’t lived hundreds or thousands of years, she doesn’t carry around that weight on her shoulders yet. But this new family of hers, or what is basically turning out to be a very elaborate witness protection programme until everyone she knows from her old life is dead, that is harder to get used to.

“Andy,” Nile says, trying to be louder than she feels, “are we going on a mission?”

Andy meets her eyes in the rearview mirror. Nile thinks of the time she thought Andy had kidnapped her, the time she thought Andy was evil but accepted that she held all the answers, and the time she’d just learned Andy was mortal but that she was going to get her family _home_. Andy had smiled at her in the rear view mirror every time, but never like this. Something’s happened after Nile told Andy about her dream, Nile knows it. But what?

“No,” Andy says. “Don’t worry.”

Joe scoffs at that, but the car remains otherwise silent. It’s not an… oppressive silence, but it’s also not _not_ that. When they pull onto the M40 and it becomes clear that no one is going to turn on the radio, Nile takes out her iPod and goes to untangle the headphones.

Out of the corner of her eye, she can tell it gets Joe’s attention even as he tries to pretend he is still staring out of the window. She offers him an earbud.

“What are you listening to?” he asks, but he’s already taking it.

“You’ll see.” 

Nile smiles when that makes Joe laugh. Turns out you don’t need to be hundreds of years old to be cryptic. Maybe just immortal is enough.

The drive is long, way longer than two hours, because Andy is not driving to the sea. She is driving North.

They stop at gas stations every couple of hours, but Nile begins to doze at some point after they pass Lancashire. She opens an eye from time to time when Joe or Nicky say something, but it’s never to her and never in a language she understands. Andy is quiet the whole time, but Nile isn’t sure if that is just what Andy is like, or if it means she’s preoccupied with something.

Nile wakes again when it’s already dark outside to the sound of Nicky and Andy having a hushed argument in the front. Joe is asleep next to her.

Nile thinks they’re talking in a language she doesn’t understand at first, but it’s only Andy saying a word in what might be Gaelic, and what has to be the directions she said she’d give Nicky. They must be in Scotland by now.

“No,” Nicky says, “not again.”

Andy slows down the car until she can look at him while still driving and then says, “Nicky,” but the way she says it, it sounds like the word _please_. And just like that, it’s not an argument anymore.

Nicky huffs some air through his nose, clearly unhappy with her, but when Andy turns back to the road he picks up his map and turns on a light to give her directions.

It’s not long before Andy takes a left off the road and drives down a path through the forest that leads to a wide lake, shimmering in the moonlight.

Joe wakes when the car stops and they all climb out, the cool and clean evening air intensely sobering. Nile shivers a little.

Andy folds her arms and pushes them up over her head, rolls her neck twice and then points in the direction of the lake – or they’re probably called lochs, here. “I’m going to stretch my legs for a moment,” she says, “you know the way, don’t wait up for me.”

Now out of the car, Nile can see that Andy has parked in front of an unassuming lodge tucked away in the mountains, just small enough to completely blend into the scenery around the loch. If it is another one of their safe houses, Nile can already tell she’ll like it better than the abandoned church in France.

She watches Andy disappear into the night, half-expecting either Nicky or Joe to stop her or at least put up a fight, but they both do the same. And then they turn to her.

“Nile.” Nicky’s voice is quiet, but it doesn’t sound as calm as it usually does. “Please tell us what happened last night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started writing this, I thought I needed this to tide me over because we weren't going to get a sequel. Tonight I post this, and what can I say? I feel hope in this chili's tonight.


	2. Chapter 2

“Wh-why do you think something happened last night?” Nile’s first instinct, always, still, is to get defensive. Say that it wasn’t her fault, that she didn’t mean it. Only of course Nicky and Joe aren’t accusing her of anything. They’re just concerned for their oldest friend.

“Andy got up in the middle of the night,” Nicky says, his eyes going unbearably soft. Nile is beginning to love and hate it in equal measure.

“If there’s anything that made her take us here-“

“Yes,” she interrupts Joe. “I had a dream. It’s- changed.”

Joe’s eyebrows rise slowly. “About Quynh?”

Nile shakes her head and tells them about the horse, the rage and revenge, the mountains and… the lake. The lake they might be standing in front of.

“ _ Santa Maria _ .” Nicky exhales a number of Italian curses that garner him a small, reassuring smile from Joe. “I knew it.”

“Has something like this happened before?”

“So to speak.” Joe shrugs. “But it’s getting late, we should get set up in the lodge before we’re all too tired to move.”

Nicky and Joe insist on carrying what little luggage there is and send Nile to find the key hidden under the third vase to the left of the door on the porch. The vase turns out to be a whiskey bottle, which makes her think of- Well. Nile knows a personal touch when she sees one, is all.

Inside, the lodge is cold the way you’d expect from an abandoned building, even though the turn-of-century furniture gives the place a cozy look. There is electricity, but the tiny lamps on the walls don’t do much to dispel the darkness.

“We’ll need to get some firewood,” Nicky says, entering the living room behind her, “but that can wait until tomorrow. Are you hungry, Nile?”

She shakes her head. They subsisted on protein bars and gas station sandwiches, not exactly filling sustenance, but Nile doesn’t think she can stomach anything else.

She looks at Joe coming in behind them, setting down the rest of the bags and then moving on to the kitchen after he gives her a smile that is as blinding as it is fake. There is nothing she wants more than to ask what it all  _ means _ , why she’s suddenly dreaming of a horse, but even though they haven’t said so, it’s obvious Nicky and Joe aren’t going to tell her anything until they’ve had a chance to speak to each other. It’s like she’s a child again all of a sudden, and her brother is in the hospital because he’s broken his leg and her parents haven’t figured out how to tell her yet. Which- is not what Joe and Nicky are usually like with her, but she also can’t fault them for reacting this way. A few days ago they were strangers, but there isn’t a single label she’s been able to think of since that would fit their relationship now.

“I think I just want to go to bed,” she says, and Nicky’s face lights up.  _ Bingo. _

“You can have your own room upstairs,” he says, and grabs her carry-on, “Come with me, I’ll show you.”

There is a bigger bathroom and three bedrooms upstairs and Nicky takes her straight to the one at the end of the landing, which has windows overlooking the lake. 

“Isn’t this the master bedroom?” Nile asks when she sees the size of the bed and Nicky begins to root around in the chest of drawers.

“Hm?” Nicky resurfaces with some bedsheets, which she has to take from him before he can put them on as well. She’s not going to deny it’s nice, being cared for, but she’s also not a toddler anymore. 

“You guys take it, honestly.” Nile gestures to the bed. “There’s two of you and only one of me. I don’t need this much space.”

“It’s okay. We don’t either.”

“I know,” Nile says. She  _ has _ seen how they sleep, and for two grown-ass men it sure is space-efficient. They smile at each other. “But still. Might be nice. Or is there a ghost haunting this room?”

“Ah, Nile. Ghosts aren’t real.” Nicky laughs, but there’s a nervous flicker in his eyes. “But not everything that haunts us is a ghost.”

Nile swallows and turns away as they wish each other good night. She remembers his words being distinctly more comforting the first time Nicky put her to bed in Goussainville. And the bed is too big, and the room too cold, and something inside her too empty for her to sleep anyway.

So Nile lies awake and listens to the wind outside, the way it makes the house creak in the darkness, and wonders if it is possible to be immortal and not feel like the only person in the world. She thinks of Andy, presumably sitting outside by the loch, wind in her face. She thinks of Quynh, hammering her fist against her coffin. She thinks of the mornings she’s caught Nicky staring out of the window and some of Joe’s sketches, and she thinks of-

There are voices behind the wall. Nile is out of her bed and halfway to the door before she realises that it must be Joe and Nicky. Sturdy as the lodge looks from the outside, its walls are not built for privacy.

They’re speaking in hushed voices, but Nile overhears a few sentences amid their pottering.

“One of us should stay with her,” Nicky says, “You remember what it was like.”

And Nile knows she shouldn’t listen in, but she’s too intrigued now. Are they talking about her?

“Andy doesn’t have half a century to recover this time, I know,” Joe replies.

There is a slight commotion, wood scraping on wood, and Nile assumes they are pushing their bed against the wall. It was the first thing they did when Copley showed them his guest room as well.

There are a few beats of silence after that, but just as Nile decides to step away she hears Joe say: “If Nile’s dreaming about it, do you think  _ he _ is as well?”

She stumbles back to the bed as if burned by the hurt and the anger and the concern in Joe’s voice, even though she knows it hasn’t even got anything to do with her. It’s just hard to feel that way when it was quite clearly your dreams who cooked up all these emotions just as they were supposed to be recuperating.

Nile reaches for her phone tucked under her pillow and thumbs through the contacts. There is a number in there she’s never called, never texted. She’s only had it for about a week, and only because standing on the balcony outside one of London’s oldest pubs, she had a  _ feeling _ that asking for it might come in handy at some point over the next century. She didn’t think it was going to be so soon.

She sighs and places her phone back under her pillow. Outside, the window howls. Next door, the whispers die down. She still can’t sleep. But it’s not yet time for answers.

Andy doesn’t come back overnight, but Nicky is already in the kitchen when Nile makes her way down the creaking stairs the next morning.

“Good morning,” he says and looks up from where he’s stirring something on the ancient stove to smile at her, “Sleep well?”

“Hm,” Nile replies. The truth is that it’s quite hard to sleep well when you know you’re either going to dream about the time you killed a man for the first time, or a woman shouting in pain and anger before dying again. Part of Nile’s military training were breathing exercises on how to fall asleep under any circumstances, but she can’t blame Andy or Booker for resorting to alcohol. It seems to go a bit quicker.

Nile opens one of the cupboards, which looks like it might have been fitted at some point during the 50s or 60s, and starts looking for some coffee. She is greeted with a stack of tinned foods that are older than her. It’s a disappointment – she really wanted a cup of coffee – but the sight also makes her oddly wistful. How many times will she still be able to have that experience?

“Hey Nile.” Joe comes into the kitchen, looking markedly more awake than Nile is used to seeing him at this hour of the day. He shrugs out of his leather jacket and plants a kiss on Nicky’s cheek.

“First night in a new safehouse!” he says to her, “Sorry, it always takes a while to make them fully habitable again. Did you sleep well?”

“It was okay.” Nile shrugs and Joe gives her an encouraging smile, which is when she notices the dark rings under his eyes. “What about you?”

Nile walks over to sit at the rickety table so she can pretend not to see the look Joe and Nicky exchange. At the very least they don’t seem to enjoy lying. Maybe that’s why they resort to being cryptic. Nile isn’t sure what she prefers. She tries not to think of-

“I’ve had better nights, truth be told,” Joe says. Nicky reaches for three bowls from a cupboard and pours what he’s been stirring into them, then gives Joe two to carry to the table.

“I found some porridge oats and milk powder,” Nicky says, grimacing a little, “The honey should make it palatable.”

“Thanks, Nicky,” Nile says and reaches for the honey. She lets the moment stretch out as Nicky and Joe settle in for breakfast, both eyeing her like she’s a child again. But enough is enough. “Are you going to tell me what’s up with Andy now? And what this ‘road trip’ has to do with my dreams?”

Joe sighs. Nicky puts his spoon down. “We’ve been here before,” he says, looking at this porridge. “About a hundred years ago. We were laying low, helping people get settled in again after the war, and recovering ourselves when the dreams started.”

Joe shares a long look with Nicky. “Booker has never been very good with horses since.”

Nile tries not to perk up at the name that she hasn’t heard any of them utter since they exiled him. “What happened? In his dreams?”

Joe’s gaze wanders to her, and softens. “They started like yours. Black horse, running along the shore of a Scottish loch.  _ This _ loch.” He nods in its direction. “How familiar are you with the myth of the kelpie, Nile?”

Nile thinks back to college, to high school, the mythology they covered, but all that comes to mind about Scotland is  _ Braveheart. _ Still, the term sounds familiar. “Are those the cursed seals?”

Nicky chuckles. “No, those are selkies. Well, more or less. The myths are similar, but there are some differences. Maybe we should have asked if you’ve heard of the Loch Ness monster instead.”

Nile rolls her eyes.

“A kelpie is a water-horse,” Joe says, “Nearly every loch in Scotland has one, or at least that’s what the locals say. You could spend hours listening to them argue which ones are real. According to myth, they can shapeshift into human form—" “Usually female,” Nicky interrupts, “—and they drag children into the water with them, they get stuck if they touch or pet the kelpie. And once in the water, the children drown, or the kelpie tears them to pieces.”

Nile swallows heavily around her porridge. “But those are cautionary tales for children,” she says, “to make sure they don’t get too close to the water. Right?”

Joe sighs through his teeth, which makes her think that the answer to this question is probably as much of a mystery to him as it is to her. 

“Andy convinced herself that the kelpie in Booker’s dreams was Quynh,” Nicky says, strained, “that she’d been cursed to exact revenge on the local children, but if only she managed to break the curse somehow we could take her back.” 

‘ _ You’re already on board with the supernatural _ ,’ Andy had taunted Nile when she prayed, and Nile almost wants to scoff at the hypocrisy now.

“And then what happened?”

Joe and Nicky are both quiet for a long time, looking at each other and then staring into their porridge. They all seem to have lost their appetite.

“This is where it gets complicated,” Joe says, “We only had Booker’s dreams to find this loch, and by the time we did he refused to sleep almost entirely. You see, his dreams started off like yours, but they got more and more violent, and watching children die in your sleep every night right after the war- it wasn’t pretty.”

“But Andy kept insisting that the horse he saw was Quynh, and so we tracked it down to the shore here, set up camp in this lodge which was long-abandoned at the time. Andy would spend hours outside waiting for the kelpie to appear, and then wake us in the middle of the night with manic eyes. She kept saying that it was Quynh, that she’d seen her, spoken to her, but that she always turned back into a horse and tried to attack her before she could get her all the way to the lodge.”

Joe shakes his head, runs his hands over his face. “She died in that loch so many times.”

“Because Quynh—” Nile jumps out of her chair the second the words catch up with her. “But she’s mortal now! Why did you leave her alone out there?”

Nicky catches her wrist and gently but firmly tugs her back onto her seat. “We didn’t. Last time the kelpie would only appear to her between the hours of dusk and dawn, so that’s when we’re checking up on her.”

He nods towards Joe with a little smile, who leans back in his seat. Nile had started to wonder what had him out of bed so early. “And immortal or not, Andy is a grown woman. Not always the most sensible, I give you that, but she can take herself.”

Nile frees her hand and slumps back in her seat. She knows Joe is right. One of the first things they talked about over dinner at Copley’s house was who of them had the longest streak of staying alive, and Andy managed a good fifty-five years at one point. Now she just needs to do it again.

“So what, now we just wait?”

“No,” Joe says, “now you and I will take the car to go shopping so we don’t have to live off porridge for the next month.”

The night before, Nile didn’t have a chance to really take in the scenery in the dark, but stepping outside now the view is nothing less than breath-taking. Mountains and long swathes of green surround the loch, which stretches out undisturbed in front of them as far as her eyes can reach. Their lodge is nestled right between two trails leading up into the mountains, looking at once picture-perfect and a little abandoned.  _ There is a metaphor in there somewhere _ , Nile thinks, but then Joe is holding open the door to the passenger for her and she jumps into the car.

It’s a twenty minute drive into the next little town which looks exactly like the lodge made Nile feel. It’s all so pretty, like something she might have seen in Harry Potter, but also a little more abandoned than she expected.  Joe looks at ease as he parks the car in front of a local store, the way you only can when you've done something thousands of times, and Nile allows herself, for a moment, to pretend that this is just a holiday grocery run.   


“What do we need?” she asks Joe as they steer their shopping cart into the store.

“Eh, you can get what you want, I’ll take care of the basics.”

“You sure? I can help if-“

“Don’t worry, Nile.” Joe’s smile is wider than the Atlantic. “That way Nicky only has reason to be mad at  _ me _ if I forget something.”

_ Weird flex _ , Nile thinks, but she just rolls her eyes at him, because she still hasn’t had coffee yet and it’s therefore too early to explain internet language to a nearly 1000-year-old man.

The shop isn’t big, as far as supermarkets go. Nile and Joe are two of three shoppers in there, and the other woman seems to only be in there still because she knows the shopkeeper and no one is hurrying her on.

“It’s no good, I tell you, no good at all,” she tells the shopkeeper, “it’s May now, the tourist season hasn’t started yet, this is the last thing we need.”

“Aye, Eireen, it can’t be that bad. Every loch in the country boasts of a beastie lurking in the deep, don’t you think sightings of one will drive them here instead of away?”

Joe stills the shopping cart at the end of the aisle, making Nile stop. They both try to cast an inconspicuous glance towards the tills.

“John, are you listening to yourself? The McDougals have spotted a kelpie on the shore of the loch. I hope you’re ready to lock up your granddaughter if they’re right!”

“They’re right alright,” John says, and Nile only notices that her hand is curling around Joe’s forearm when he hisses at her nails digging into his skin.

“How do you know?” Eireen asks, and Joe gives her a look, a little like pleading, a lot like desperation. From where she’s standing, Nile sees John the shopkeeper jab his finger towards a piece of paper tacked to the shop window. The paper is almost translucent, and the sun is out. She looks at Joe again, to see if he can see it as well, and she thinks they both might be beating themselves up for missing it when they came in. The note reads  _ Has Anyone Seen Little Colin? _

“Because the first one’s already been taken.”


	3. Chapter 3

Nile goes to find Andy on the shore of the loch when dusk comes around. There is a log of a fallen tree a few hundred yards from their lodge that Andy sits on, secluded by a few other trees. She looks strangely at peace, staring at the loch. Nile isn’t sure what she expected, but after how torn up Andy looked the night Joe and Nicky were taken… Serenity was not the first thing on her mind. 

But maybe that’s because Nile already knows what happened to one of the local children, and nothing is further from her mind than serenity. She wants to help Colin and his parents and she can tell Joe and Nicky do, too, but when they discussed it earlier, Joe said: “We help where we can, Nile, but we aren’t detectives.”

“So what do we do to help?” she asked.

Nicky, who’d been staring out the window, turned to them. It was like there was something he wanted to say on the matter, but then he took one look at Joe, and didn’t. 

And so Nile helped Nicky chop firewood – and gained a whole new appreciation for Andy wielding her axe so effortlessly – then spent the rest of the afternoon dusting and tidying the lodge in an effort to take her mind of the kelpie. By the time Nicky called her for dinner she was tired and a bit achy, but her mind is still far from calm.

Andy’s eyes flick to her when Nile’s steps crunch a branch. “They sent you to babysit me?”

Nile rolls her eyes and sits down next to Andy, dumping the sandwiches Nicky made her carry in Andy’s lap. “Send the baby to do the baby sitting? Rogue choice.”

There’s an amused smile curling around Andy’s lips as she thanks her and sinks her teeth into one of sandwiches. “Maybe they just wanted some alone time.”

“Well, I’m glad. The walls are thin.”

They both laugh, and Nile doesn’t bother correcting Andy. She volunteered to check in on her when Nicky was getting ready to leave. It’s not that she thinks she has a better chance of convincing Andy to come back with her, but the way she sees it, right now, she has the least to lose – her immortality won’t wear off so soon – and the most to gain.

Nile picks at the cuff of her jacket, eyes carefully trained on the loch when she says: “If I see her as a kelpie, will I stop dreaming about her?”

Because there is one difference between her and Joe and Nicky right now that isn’t their age. Nicky and Joe don’t seem to share Andy’s view that this kelpie is Quynh. And Nile, well. A day ago she didn’t even believe in the existence of kelpies, and here she is, worried she’ll see one tearing up a child in her dreams. The way she normally sees Quynh.

Andy chews for a moment before turning back to Nile. “I think so. Or I used to think so. But I’m not so sure anymore.”

_ Booker would have the answer _ , Nile thinks. Immediately reels a little, by how quickly that name came to mind, now. Not that she’s not allowed to think about him, that’s not how this exile is supposed to work. Not like you can exile someone from your mind, anyway. She isn’t even really sure why she’s trying to.

Nile casts her eyes across the shore. “How long did you have to wait for her to show up last time?”

“Last time we found the Loch two weeks in, and at that point- Oh well, let’s just say at that point things already weren’t pretty.”

Nile carefully avoids looking at Andy, but how the other woman masks her concern with a curiously raised eyebrow doesn’t escape her. It’s not that Nile is one of those people who needs hours and hours of sleep, she’s not a teenager anymore. But she’d like to have restful sleep again, one day, not snatched moments here and there before she jerks awake. The more selfish version of that thought is that she doesn’t want to end up like-

“Can I ask you something?”

Andy smirks at her. “Aren’t you already?”

Nile rolls her eyes and bumps her shoulder against Andy’s and they sway from side to side for a moment like small ripples on the loch’s surface.

“Why do you think it’s Quynh? The kelpie, I mean. Why do you think she was cursed?”

“Oh, kid.” Andy laughs, shaking her head. “You’re still asking why?”

“Yeah.” Nile doesn’t like how defiant she sounds, but what can she do. “And I expect I will for some time if y’all keep springing random bullshit on me.”

Andy puts an arm around her shoulders and pulls her close, allows her to drop her head on Andy’s shoulder. She wants the comfort, she does. But not like this.

When the sun dips below the peaks of the mountain range on the horizon, Nile untangles herself from Andy and gets up with a sigh, dusting off her jeans.

“You staying out here?” she asks. “You should come back to sleep at the lodge tonight at least, Nicky said the temperature—"

But she stops when Andy’s fingers close around her wrist.

In front of them, a black horse rises from the loch. It is nearly as dark as the night sky around them, the water caught in its hair giving it a shimmery glow under the crescent moon. 

Nile is trying to move before she even has time to comprehend what’s happening. She tries to get a foot in front of Andy, put her body between Andy and the horse, but Andy is having none of it. She holds Nile’s hand in place where it is, not letting her budge, her eyes alive with a delighted glow.

The horse – the  _ kelpie _ – trots up to them on the shore. If Nile didn’t know any better, she would say that it keeps eye contact with Andy the entire time. Only she does know better. And it is freaking her the fuck out.

The kelpie comes to a stand maybe a hand width apart from Andy, who is smiling so wide Nile worries it might split open her face. She’s never seen Andy look like this, so happy she almost looks drunk, and Niles wishes she could forget that the creature in front of them is a mythological beast that would kill Andy the second she touches it.

It is both too easy and impossible to imagine that this is Quynh, the woman Nile only knows from her dreams. When she inhales the air around them, it now has the distinct taste of something salty, like seawater. The taste of revenge. Nile closes her eyes and quickly opens them again. It’s just like being asleep, and Nile’d rather be able to tell that apart. Her life is already too much like a dream lately. 

The kelpie turns its stare from Andy to Nile.  _ Or a nightmare.  _ Its eyes are dark and unforgiving and Nile only wishes she could move – if the kelpie touched its forehead to hers right now there is nothing she could do but be dragged under.

The spook is over when Nile blinks. The kelpie turns away from her, with one last look at Andy, before it gallops away, making its way down the shore.

Nile stares after the horse, mesmerised by the ripples of light on its coat, and her heart beats so wildly she’s amazed Andy can’t hear it.

Andy, who has gone stock-still beside her. Nile turns when she makes a sound, barely audible as it is. She lets go of Nile’s arm. There is a single tear slipping down Andy’s cheek.

It’s a tough task trying to fall asleep that night. Andy came back to the lodge with Nile, practically beginning to shake and shiver right there and then on the shore the second Nile laid an arm around her shoulders. Nicky got a fire going by the time they made it back to the lodge, and they bundled Andy up in front of it to warm up. Joe had produced playing cards from somewhere, and with some poking and prodding cajoled Andy to join in as Nicky and Joe taught Nile the best ways to win – and cheat – at poker. Andy went to bed after a single game though, and after Nile caught Nicky and Joe up on what happened with the kelpie, she did the same.

Lying alone in the gigantic bed in the master bedroom, she wonders what things would be like if Booker was there. There are only three bedrooms, and it’s out of the question that Joe and Nicky wouldn’t share, but between the rest of them, well. Nile doesn’t think they should sleep alone.

“Maybe the kelpie won’t try to kill her this time.” Nile hears Nicky say when some conversation carries from Joe and Nicky’s room again.

“Only what’s the alternative, Andy sitting at the loch day in day out growing lovesick? You remember what she looked like last time, all withered and-”

“Yes Joe, I was there, I don’t need to be reminded.” Nicky’s voice is quiet and distant somehow, and Nile hates that she has to hear the two of them like this all of a sudden. It feels like a violation of privacy, of hers, of theirs, and as much as she also felt like she was part of something there when Booker and Nicky pulled her from the car after she defenestrated Merrick, this is- It’s all a bit too much.

“I’m sorry, hayati,” Joe whispers, “I just don’t think I can bear it, again. Not so soon after-“

“Shh, it’s okay. I’ve got you.”

Nile turns onto her side and presses the other pillow over her ear. Even if she does manage to block out the soft sounds of crying from the other room, she doesn’t think she’ll be able to sleep. Not unless she knows what she’ll see when she closes her eyes, but the only person who can tell her what that’s going to be, is-

Nile lets out a shaky exhale. Opens her eyes. She needs to confront this.

As quietly as she can, she reaches for her phone and creeps down the stairs. It’s unlikely that Joe and Nicky won’t hear her, but better they hear her move around than hear her talk to- To Booker.

The embers from the fire Nicky lit earlier are still glowing in the fireplace when she sits down on one of the armchairs, pulling a thick tartan blanket around her shoulders and tucking her feet under her thighs. The orange of the dying fire gives the whole room a comforting glow, but all Nile can think of as she looks into is the time she put her hand in the fire. How quickly her skin had knit back together. How much it had still stung.

_ Just because we keep on living, doesn’t mean we stop hurting. _

Nile takes a deep breath and scrolls to Booker’s contact in her phone. It starts to ring. She holds her breath.

_ Just because we keep on living _

Ring

_ Doesn’t mean _

Ring

_ We stop hurting. _

But no one picks up.

Nile doesn’t sigh when she lets her phone sink. When she pulls the blanket tighter around herself, when she places her head on the armrest of the chair. She doesn’t sigh, because this is what it’s like to be immortal after all. Again and again, the only person in the world.

The next morning, Joe wakes her by kneeling in front of the armchair and fanning the steam rising from a coffee cup into her face.

Nile cracks an eye open at him. “What are you doing?” she asks.

“I saw this in an advert,” Joe says, and waits for her to untangle herself enough before handing her the cup of coffee, “and wanted to test if it works in real life as well. Did the sweet scent of caffeine wake you?”

Nile smiles into her cup. “I don’t think so. It was probably your joints cracking when you crouched down.”

“Careful,” Joe says, but he’s grinning as he sits on one of the armrests next to her. “What are you doing down here?”

Nile looks into her coffee and shrugs. “Couldn’t sleep, and I was cold.”

Joe nods, likely at how reasonable her answer is, but Nile can tell what his next question is going to be before he even opens his mouth. “Did you… dream anything?”

“What time is it?”

“Past ten.”

That means she slept for over nine hours. She always dreams when she sleeps more than six, so that means- She blinks up at Joe.

“No,” she says, “no dreams at all.”

“Huh,” Joe says, and Nile finds she agrees. But she wonders if Joe also thinks what she’s thinking. That this means their only way to keep track of this is now again- Nile checks her phone. But it just sits there, in her palm, notification-less.

Joe takes her outside to the loch, where Andy and Nicky are having a picnic. It’s a beautiful day, sunny but a little overcast, and it’s easy to smile when Andy pushes an entire quarter of a melon her way. Easier to sink her entire face into it if it makes Joe laugh.

Andy leans back on her forearms and turns her face to the sky, sunglasses firmly in place, as Nicky gets up to skip some stones on the loch. Nile watches them flit across the water, five times, ten, maybe even fifteen, she loses count.

It’s wonderful and strange, how even if everything feels wrong, something as simple as the sun in the sky can make her feel better.

Nicky notices her counting the skips of his stone and holds one out to her when she’s finished eating: “Do you want to try?”

“No, Nile, don’t let him do this to you,” Joe says, “the easiest way to develop an inferiority complex is Nicky teaching you something that requires patience and precision.”

Nile laughs as she gets up and dusts her jeans off. “I’m not gonna  _ develop _ an inferiority complex, Joe, I’ve seen your sketches.”

“You draw, too?” Andy asks and Nile nods, a little self-consciously.

“Not much anymore, but, yeah. Thought I was gonna go to grad school for art history once I finished my posting, or at least, that was the plan.”

Nicky hands her a little stone and shows her how to hold it. “You can still do that.”

“Am I ever going to finish my posting with you?”

Nicky shrugs. “Or whenever. Time is on your side. How many degrees do you think Joe has?”

“Technically none because he never bothers to formally graduate,” Andy chimes in and Joe laughs. “So there you have it Nile, you’re the one with the highest level of education at the moment.”

“What about Nicky’s doctorate?”

Andy throws a strawberry at him. “Knock it off, Joe, that was seventy years ago.”

“Was it?”

Nicky chuckles. “Yes, and if everyone else with that degree isn’t retired by now… they should be.”

Nile smiles at him, then skips her stone across the loch. It doesn’t even hop half as many times as Nicky’s, but it doesn’t matter. Maybe she was wrong about immortality. Maybe it’s just the night that makes her feel lonely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the chapter count has gone up, because I was fiddling with the last chapter over the weekend and it ballooned, so I think everything will make more sense this way.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: blood, injury, temporary death - this chapter is a bit heavier than the ones that have come before. Please take care of yourself, and feel free to message me if you need more information before you decide to read on or move on.
> 
> Also feel free to wait for chapter five if you want to avoid an angsty cliffhanger.

They decide to go on a small hike before the weather turns again. Andy looks at them like they have lost their minds for choosing any form of exercise when they could be lying in the spring sun instead, but by unspoken agreement, none of them push her reasons for doing so.

“Call us,” Nicky says as they’re turning to leave.

“Sure thing.”

Joe barely waits until they’re out of earshot before he sighs, “She won’t.”

Nicky gives him a rueful smile that slowly slides over to Nile. “I know.”

There is something about the landscape that makes it harder to worry about this though. Joe makes just enough awful jokes that Nile and Nicky both groan at, and Nicky stops often enough to borrow Nile’s phone to take pictures of mountain flowers, that the feeling of being on a weekend trip with friends comes back.

The day turns misty after about an hour. Nile doesn’t think they made it far enough up the mountain to have reached the fog and clouds yet, but it appears like the fog has come to them instead. She might not even have noticed, but they reach a viewing platform from which she assumes it might be possible to see the whole loch on a good day, but now she can barely make out the shore where they left Andy.

“Ach, Scottish weather, ey?”

Nile turns to see a middle-aged couple join Joe and Nicky on a bench behind her. 

“Going through four seasons in a day, but you wouldn’t have it any other way,” Joe replies to the woman’s remark with an easy smile. He has his arms outstretched on the back of the bench behind Nicky, and Nile wonders what they look like to the couple. How many times have they had a conversation with someone who never once suspected they were immortal? The way she can’t quite picture it makes her sad. In a way, she is also still an unsuspecting outsider.

“You’re not from here, are you?” The man asks, but not in an unfriendly way.

“Guilty as charged.” Joe smiles and puts his hands up.

“Are you staying anywhere nearby?”

“We’re renting the lodge at the bottom of the mountain,” Nicky tells her. The man nods at this information, exchanges a frown with his wife then turns to Joe and Nicky again.

“Listen, laddies, we don’t mean to trouble you, but it may be a good idea to go back there and not go near the shore for a couple of days.”

Nile tries to control her breathing at the thought of Andy, lying on the shore as they speak.

“There’s a beastie living in the loch which has been sighted again, and you can think what you want of myths, but you should stay away from any horses you see. I’ll spare you the details of what they can do, but they’ve found the body of a child near the loch this morning.” 

Nicky thanks the couple for the warning, and Nile has to turn away, her hand flying to her mouth. There’s nothing they can do or say while they are also here, but it seems to be obvious that they all need to, because the couple is on their way again after a few moments.

“Andy.” They all say her name at the same time once the couple is out of earshot, Joe stands up and Nicky is already pacing. Nile pulls out her phone to give Andy a call, but of course, of course, there is no reception up here. Joe swears under his breath until Nicky reaches over to squeeze his hand. 

“We have to get back there,” Nicky says, “We didn’t even tell her about the child.”

Joe nods and walks up to the wooden railing around the viewing platform, peeking over the edge. “What do you reckon?”

Nicky seems to consider this for a moment, before he shrugs and joins Joe. “It’s probably fastest. Do we need to swim?”

It takes Nile a moment to realise what they’re planning to do. “Are you going to  _ jump _ ?”

She is not sure what reaction she expected. 

“It’s okay, Nile,” Nicky says, “You’ve done it before, you know you can survive.”

“I might, but not my phone,” she says, and waves it at him, “I’m just going to go back the way we came and try to call Andy as soon as I’ve got signal.”

What she doesn’t say is that there is just about nothing she is less keen on than dying by drowning. But if she reads their faces right, she might not have to.

“Alright." Joe nods at Nile as he and Nicky are already climbing over the railing. “See you down there.”

He takes Nicky’s hand and they quickly press their foreheads against each other before jumping off the platform.

Nile shakes her head at the sound of a splash when they hit the water, then picks herself up and hurries back the way they came. She slows when the couple who warned them comes back into view.

"Excuse me," she says when she catches up with them, "the, the creature you were talking about earlier, that's a Kelpie, right?"

The man nods. "Aye."

"And is there anything that can be done to stop them?"

The man shoots her a funny look, but more like he's entertaining her question from a theoretical perspective. Like it's impossible that she might be taking the myth seriously.

"Not much to it, lass. You have to kill ‘em, otherwise they keep coming back."

Nile nods and thanks them, wonders for a moment how it'll look if she just takes off running, but it's not the time for image considerations.

She keeps her phone in her hand as she jumps down the cobbled path, glancing at the reception bars in the corner of the screen.  _ Any time now, any- _

The second a single bar appears, her phone lights up with notifications. She has seven missed calls and five text messages, sent two hours ago in quick succession.

_ Is it the kelpie? _

_ I’m seeing her, too _

_ Are you there?  _

_ Is Andy-  _

_ I know I’m not wanted, and I won’t bother anyone if they don’t want me to- _

_ I’m on my way _

Nile hits the call back button quicker than her thoughts can fully process what Booker has written. She's still running, her heart beating in her throat between the ringing tones. But he doesn't pick up, and Nile wants to curse, wants to scream, but all she does is clutch her phone more firmly and pick up the pace.

It's when she reaches the bottom of the mountain that she knows that something is different. She's not sure what yet, she's not sure if the others are in danger, but something has changed.

She makes her way to the spot where they left Andy, slower now, trying to get her breathing back under control. She stops dead in her tracks when she hears voices coming from the shore, and creeps the last few metres on tip toes, until she can observe what's happening from a point between tree branches.

Joe and Nicky made it before her, both standing on the shore dripping wet, and looking at Andy with big eyes. Only it's not just Andy. There is another woman sitting next to her on the log. Her dark hair is dripping with water, and she’s shivering, wrapped in the picnic blanket Andy brought earlier. Even with her back half-turned to Nile, and her face covered by her hair, Nile knows that this is Quynh with a certainty she can’t quite explain.

Joe and Nicky look dumb-founded, holding hands in a vice-like grip as they stare at Quynh, and Nile shuffles around so she can take a better look at the two women. Quynh looks tired, and quietly miserable, but her face lights up with something like wonder or disbelief whenever she looks at the others. Andy has an arm around her, rubbing soothing circles onto her back and the  _ look _ on her face… Nile doesn’t think she’s ever seen Andy look like that. Hell, she doesn’t think she’s ever seen anyone look like that. 

One thing is clear: Quynh is a lot more to her than just a lost soldier.

“I don’t know how long I’ve got,” Quynh says. There is a lilt of an accent in her voice, and Nile doesn’t catch every word she says, but it’s lovely and sharp at the same time, and Nile can imagine very clearly how beautiful and terrifying this woman would be under different circumstances. “It’s so much worse, like this. When I come back to myself and I’m free, and I can move and just when I’ve started to believe it, this, this… curse overtakes me again. At least in the coffin, I die, and then it’s over. When I’m- When I’m this horse, I have to see and do all these things, and I’m fighting for control all the time, but I-” She stops herself, and Nile realises she’s been holding her breath. Quynh doesn’t look like she’s fighting down tears, but Joe and Nicky definitely are. 

“I feel so out of control,” Quynh says, “And I don’t know how to tell right from wrong anymore.”

Andy’s hand has found its way into Quynh’s, and she is squeezing it tightly. “How can we help you, my love?”

“I can’t be helped.” Quynh looks at Andy with such sorrow, Nile feels like she shouldn’t be witnessing this. It gets worse when Quynh turns aside to where she is hiding behind the branches. “Hello, Nile. It’s nice to meet you.”

The others turn to where Nile is hiding behind the branches. She can feel her face growing hot as she struggles to join them on the clearing. 

“Hi,” she says, out of breath.

Closer like this, Quynh has curious dark eyes that look nothing like those Nile saw on the kelpie, or locked behind the iron maiden in her dreams. It still makes Nile shiver, though. The others may be smiling at her, but she can’t shake the weight of the thousands and thousands of years their combined stares have. 

When it becomes clear no one is going to say anything else, Nile clears her throat and says: “Some of the locals say there is a way to deal with kelpies.”

“Yes, to kill them.” Quynh snorts, but not derisively. More like someone who is at the end of their rope, hearing suggestion after suggestion they have already tried. It’s the way Andy used to snort at Nile when she had just turned immortal. “What I wouldn’t give for that to be true, if only to end things! But I can’t be killed, none of us can.”

_ Of course we can be killed, we just don’t stay dead _ , Nile thinks, but it seems like a terrible thing to suggest to someone who knows this better than any of them. 

“Don’t say that, my heart,” Andy says, “You know each time might be the last.”

Quynh turns to her, and Nile has to look away when she spots the tears simmering in the corners of Andy’s eyes. She sees Joe and Nicky do the same, the pain and the anguish of what is to come already etched into their faces. “I meant only as a reprieve, Andromache. None of us are able to-” Quynh cuts herself off. She’s searching Andy’s face for something, and when finds it, as it was clear she would, she recoils. “No.”

“Quynh, I’m so sorry, I-” Andy leans forward, tries to grab Quynh’s hand where she’s pulled away from her.

“No, Andromache, don’t-” Quynh only has time to get up before the spook begins and then she is turning, transforming into a black horse right in front of their eyes. Rearing back on its hind legs, eyes ablaze with something a little like anger, something a lot more like panic. The air smells like sea water again and Nile wants to scream. 

“Quynh!” Andy is on her feet, arms outstretched to calm the kelpie but Joe is on her before she can do anything. Hugs her tight to his chest, holding her arms behind her back as he drags her away. 

“Joe, no!” she screams, “What are you doing, let me-”

“You just heard her, she’s not herself when she’s like this, it’s too dangerous-”

The noise of their tussle dies down as Joe drags her closer to the lodge, but Nile is only paying attention with half an ear anyway. She gets into a fighting stance next to Nicky, and without words they try to crowd the kelpie back into the water. 

Nile thought it would be harder to think of the kelpie and Quynh as separate entities once she knew the curse was real. But now that she’s seen the beautiful woman looking at Andy with all the care and the anguish in the world, it’s impossible to imagine she could ever be the horse violently bucking in front of her. 

“Be careful,” Nicky calls to her when she steps closer to the kelpie, arms outstretched. Nile is mirroring the way Andy approached the horse, and it seems to work - the kelpie calms down, bit by bit, bucking less and less until it stops all of a sudden, staring at Nile with big, dark eyes.

“Don’t touch it,” Nicky calls again, and Nile doesn’t  _ mean _ to, she knows what happens if she does, but. She also turns to look at Nicky, who has a gun trained on them.  _ Of course he does _ . She turns back to the kelpie, which is still looking at her, hot breath steaming from its nostrils. Nile can feel it against her skin, which is the moment she knows that it is too late.

There is exactly one moment in which the kelpie presses its head against her hand like a cat seeking comfort, and Nile’s heart gallops to a halt. Then the kelpie’s eyes roll back in its head and it bucks onto its hind legs again, abruptly dragging Nile’s arm into the air where it is stuck to its head.

She yelps in pain as her shoulder twists, but before it can properly begin to hurt it is over again, a shot ringing out over her head. Nicky’s aim is impeccable as always, and the kelpie slumps to the ground in front of Nile, dragging her down with it.

She hisses when her knees connect with the ground, but when she tries to massage them, only her left hand makes it there. The other is still stuck to the kelpie’s head. 

Nicky is by her side in an instant. He whispers something to the horse in a language Nile doesn’t understand, but it sounds like an apology. He rests a hand on Nile’s shoulder and leans close to inspect the bullet wound on the kelpie’s forehead. It is already beginning to close. Nile isn’t sure whether to be horrified or relieved.

“Hang in there, Nile.” Nicky’s grip on her shoulder tightens, then lets her go. He hands her the gun. “I’m going to get Joe.”

The kelpie is slow to heal but Nile nearly gets a cramp trying to pull her hand away from its face. Her left hand is clutching at the gun. It’s not her good arm, and she’s way too close, and she hates that this is what it’s come to.

Only what is the alternative? If the kelpie doesn’t turn back into Quynh, it is going to drag Nile into the loch and then she’ll learn what it’s like to drown firsthand. Or worse. Nile wants to cry. Why did she ever think immortality could be comforting?

She drops the gun when her phone rings in her pocket. Reaches for it with unsteady fingers.

“Hello?” So much for being an adult. She sounds like a scared child.

“Are you okay?”  _ Booker _ . “I just landed in Glasgow, slept on the plane. I saw- I saw.”

Nile draws in a shaky breath. It’s stupidly nice to hear his voice, even better that she doesn’t have to explain. The others were able to empathise with her, but Booker. Booker  _ understands _ .

The kelpie in front of her looks like it’s just a sleeping horse now, and she tries, desperately to convince herself that she could take away her hand any time she wanted.

“I don’t know if I’m okay,” she whispers, scared to wake it. “I don’t know what’s going to happen now. Did this ever happen to you?”

Booker laughs one of his humourless chuckles. “No, I didn’t get close after I saw what happened to the children, last time. Are you stuck?”

“I’m-” she can’t quite bring herself to say it.  _ Don’t cry _ . “And I don’t know what to do, what’s going to happen now, you were right to stay away.”

_ I’m scared, I’m scared, oh God, I’m scared, _ Nile thinks, but can’t say it.

“Shh, Nile, listen. I’m in a rental car now, I’m on my way to the lodge. Did someone tell you the story of the nine-year-old who cut off his finger?” 

“No?” 

“I read up on myths around kelpies a few years ago, once I could stomach them again.” Nile wonders how Booker can sound so calm, but then he did when he told her about his son and everything else that went wrong. “There is a story about a young boy who touched the kelpie’s face to pet it, and when he realised he was stuck, he cut off his own finger before the kelpie could drag him into the loch. Apparently he escaped both the fate of the other children and the kelpie wasn’t seen again for centuries. It’s- it’s not ideal, but there are theories that kelpies’ curses can be broken not just by killing them but also with personal sacrifice.

“You don’t need to let it drag you into the sea, but you need to- Are you still there?”

Nile went quiet once she heard the sound of voices and harsh breathing behind her. “The others are coming back, I’ll call you back,” she breathes and slides her phone back into her pocket. 

She doesn’t want to hang up, but everything is already complicated enough without her adding another layer of unresolved emotions to the mix. 

Joe and Nicky are storming down the shore towards her, and Nile has half a mind to wonder what they’ve done with Andy, that she isn’t leading the charge. The wound on the kelpie’s head is now nearly completely healed. Nicky skids to a halt and sinks to his knees next to her, picking up the gun that she dropped, finger already on the trigger.

“Are you alright, Nile?” Joe asks.

She nods, then she shrugs, then she shakes her head and then she has to fight down a laugh so she doesn’t cry. “You need to cut off my hand,” Nile says.

“Are you sure?” Nicky asks, reaching for where her hand is attached to the kelpie.

“Don’t!” Nile yelps, surprised at her own intensity, “If you touch it we’ll both be stuck. Now can one of you get one of your damn swords and make this quick before the kelpie wakes.” They both look at her with alarmed frowns, and she sighs. Swallows, hard. “It’ll grow back, you know that.”

It’s not a great thought, having her hand cut off, but between getting devoured at the bottom of the loch or drowning, she knows it isn’t really a choice. 

Joe and Nicky share a small glance before Joe crouches and pulls a knife somewhere out of his boot. He shows it to Nile, and she nods, not sure if it’s necessary for her to know, but she appreciates the gesture nonetheless. She just wants it over with.

Nicky slides an arm around her shoulders and pulls her into his chest, his broad hands holding her neck so she can’t look at her wrist. Nile closes her eyes and continues fighting the tears that are threatening to spill down her cheeks. She concentrates on the sudden bout of gratefulness blooming in her chest, just at the certainty that they’re  _ there _ . Fights the confusion, and the pain and everything else, even as she wishes it was someone else holding her. Even if it is reminder that it won’t be over with this.

It’s not fair, she thinks, that the decision to sacrifice something should come to them, people who have aready given up so much. And who don’t have many things left they could give up, even if they wanted to.

Joe can much less give up Nicky than Nicky can give up Joe, their lives and loves both immortal. And if they sacrificed Andy, just to get back Quynh, then no one would be helped. No one at all. 

Nile always thought her biggest sacrifice to make for this life of immortality would be her family, but even that has already been taken from her. All she has left of them are the pictures and the voice notes and the messages on her phone. It rests heavy and warm in her jeans pocket against her thigh. It’s already strange to think she just used it to speak to Booker.

“Ready?” Joe asks, and Nile nods against Nicky’s chest. Nicky holds on a little tighter. “Don’t look,” he says.

It’s so painful, Nile thinks she might have to throw up even though Joe makes quick work of it. Nicky is murmuring words of comfort into her hair as Nile’s blood drenches her jeans and spills over the shore. Her hand is already regrowing, it’s a strange feeling, but she doesn’t have long to focus on it. In front of them, the kelpie is rearing back to life.

Nicky lets go of her and reaches for his gun, stands next to Joe as they pick up what Nile and Nicky tried to do earlier - crowd the kelpie back into the sea. Only now, Nile knows it’s never going to work that way.

“No,” she says, pushing herself to her feet, “stand back! Don’t shoot, we need to-”

They all turn to her, Joe, Nicky, and the kelpie. Nile is dimly aware of all the blood still stuck to her body, but at least she can feel her fingers again. Not that she has a weapon on her, eternally unprepared compared to Nicky and Joe. All she has in her pocket is-

“You bastards!” And is sprinting down the shore towards them. “How dare you lock me in, do you honestly think I-” She stops when she sees the kelpie, which is slowly but surely trotting up to Nile.

Nicky raises his gun again but Nile holds out her palm and shakes her head firmly. The kelpie is much calmer than it was before, but the rage and the fire, the pungent smell of seawater is still washing over Nile. She’s not sure she’ll ever stand at the shore of the sea again and not think of this moment.

Nile takes a deep breath in just as the kelpie rears back up on its hind legs, looking like it’s ready to pounce on her. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out her phone with shaking fingers, holding it out for the kelpie to see. She waits until the kelpie calms a little, trotting closer and sniffing at her phone. And then. Then she hurls her phone into the loch. 

It doesn’t skip the way the stones Nicky used earlier did. It just sinks with a heavy sounding splash. But at least it has the intended effect, as the kelpie dashes after it immediately, throwing itself back into the loch as if to dive after the phone. Nile doesn’t know how far she threw it, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Moments pass in silence, and the kelpie does not come back up.

“NO!” Andy shouts, a loud burst of agony that needs neither elaboration nor dampening. 

“I’m sorry we locked you in the lodge,” Joe says, “we were trying to protect-” But he stops when Andy just shakes her head and sits back down on her log. She’s said everything she needs to, both absolution and plea. 

Nile wraps her arms around her middle and stalks to the edge of the loch until the water is lapping gently at the tips of her shoes. She can feel Joe and Nicky looking at her, but she can’t bear to turn for even more heartbreak. They wanted to ease her into this life, she knows, but even so, that was never going to happen.

There is no need for words from Andy to leave her alone, and there isn’t from Nile. She thinks about her phone, and her family old and new, and she thinks about Booker. And she just hopes it was enough.


	5. Chapter 5

Nile stands at the shore of the loch until the fog rolls in with the darkness. She can see it coming from miles away, settling from the mountains over the water, coming closer and closer to the shore until she can barely see a few metres into the distance. It’s as eerie as it is lovely, but she still shivers in her light jacket.

Andy is still sitting on the upturned log when she turns around. This is where her centuries and centuries of experience of sitting still compared to Nile’s flighty fidgeting show the most, and this, Nile thinks, is what she might have mistaken for serenity. Andy isn’t turned in on herself, but when Nile sits down and wordlessly offers to hold her she curls into Nile’s side immediately.

Nile knows she isn’t who Andy wants to be held by, but that is not what this is about. Sometimes a hug is about comfort, and sometimes a hug is just about holding on.

“I really thought this was going to be it,” Andy says after a while. She’s not looking at Nile, her eyes trained on some point in the distant fog. “When I lost my immortality, I thought it was all coming together. That I wouldn’t need to worry about dying, because I had you, and that I wouldn’t have to die alone, because you were dreaming about Quynh again. 

“I know what it sounds like, don’t look at me like that. Why do you think I didn’t tell Joe and Nicky? They’d think I’d gone sentimental in my old age. But I really-- I really believed I was going to get her back this time. What’s one more miracle after all?”

Nile squeezes her shoulder. “Good to know you’re also still on board with the supernatural.”

Andy laughs wetly but pulls away from Nile’s embrace and reaches over to take her hand. “You did the right thing, you know?”

Nile shrugs, carefully not looking at Andy’s face. It’s what she needs to hear, but not what she knows how to hear yet.

“I’m telling you now because I probably won’t be acting like it for the next few days, and I don’t want you to feel guilty just because I’m an old, moody brat.” Andy searches Nile’s face until she meets her eyes, her gaze softening at what she must see. “I guess it’s already too late for that. But you did good, Nile. You did good.”

Nile looks away again, but her grip on Andy’s hand tightens. 

“When did you forget your mother’s face Andy?” she asks. Knows it’s a rude question, but if she doesn’t ask now, she never will. “How many years in?”

Andy sighs. “Don’t think it would be easier if I could give you an answer to this question.”

“It was worth a try.”

“It always is, kid. It really is.”

A car approaches the lodge in the distance. The sound is familiar, but it still sets Nile’s heart racing when the motor turns off. Andy doesn’t appear to notice anything, she’s still sitting on the log hugging her knees when Nile gets up, barely even acknowledges her when she says she’ll see Andy back at the lodge. Probably won’t leave until the morning anyway, until she can be sure dawn won’t bring what she wants it to.

Dim light is spilling out from the lodge and Nile tiptoes over to where Andy parked the rental car Copley secured. Booker has been careful, not parking directly next to their car but a few yards behind, up the hill slope, just inconspicuous enough that he could be a stranger who got lost. She barely notices the car with its lights turned off, her heart rate picking up the second she does. It reminds her of the one time she snuck out of her mum’s house when she was seventeen to go sit in a boy’s car and drive to her friend’s house. It was the last time she ever felt truly powerful.

Booker meets her eyes through the windshield, the dashboard lighting faintly illuminating his features. He told her he napped on the plane, but he looks like he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks. Nile thinks of the dreams he must have been anticipating, the dreams he must have  _ had _ of Quynh for years and years and wonders how he’s managed to sleep at all these past few years.

She rests her hand on the door handle. All parts of her are blown to pieces, scattered to the four winds, but in that short moment, it’s like they all settle where they are. Maybe she can learn to live with chaos.

Nile slides into the passenger seat and pretends to look out via the front window. From the corner of her eyes she can tell that Booker is doing the same.

“You’re not stuck anymore,” he says after a while.

“No,” Nile agrees. He doesn’t ask how, and she’s happy he doesn’t, both so she doesn’t need to revisit the memory so soon and so he doesn’t have to know.

They fall quiet again, but at least with him, it’s not like there’s something she feels like she has to hold back from asking. “Thank you for the advice,” she says eventually.

“What did you do?”

Nile turns to face Booker, tries to keep her face neutral, but grimaces anyway. “I threw my phone into the lake.”

Booker does one of his sad chuckles and she joins in, laughing at how silly it feels to say it, infantile somehow, that an object could be a big sacrifice to her. Only it never was just that, and before she even notices she’s doing it, she’s crying. The tears are hot on her cold cheeks, everything she’s felt and hasn’t allowed herself to feel in the last couple of days unbottled.

“Hey, Nile, hey,” Booker says, and gathers her into her arms. Just picks her up, one arm around her shoulders, one underneath her knees and lifts her across the stick shift between them. She feels light and untethered, lets her forehead fall onto his shoulder, racking loud sobs into his shirt, his hands warm and steadier than she expected on her back.

She’s never going to see her family again, and that’s fine, that’s  _ dandy _ , that was going to happen at some point anyway, but why, why, why does she need to give this up as well? She can forge a new family, people do it all the time the world over, but how can she heal, how can her new family heal if they are hurting everywhere, separated?

Booker brushes what feels like a kiss over her hair and Nile thinks that this might be what’s finally going to tear her in two.

“I still can’t tell you it’s going to get better. You’ve got to listen to the others for that,” Booker whispers.

Nile leans back and wipes at her tears, suddenly unable to look him in the face. “I’m trying,” she says, “I’m beginning to think we need to find a way to be okay without it ever getting better.”

Booker laughs again, and this time there is even a bit of humour in it. “I’ve already told you that you’re going to be better at this than any of us, have I?”

It’s not what Nile wants to hear, but she’s going to take it as a compliment nonetheless. What she wants, that’s much too big and much too fickle to put into words anyway. She might have to try again in a hundred years.

“Do you think it was enough?” she asks Booker’s shoulder, still not looking at his face.

“The phone?”

She nods, and Booker considers for a minute. “I think that might depend.”

“On?”

He meets her eyes then, for the first time since she looked at him through the windshield. He looks lonely, but at least there are two of them now. “If curses can be broken by deciding we’ve suffered enough.”

Booker pulls his phone from his pocket and presses it into her hand. “I’ve got the number memorised, I’ll text you when I get a new one. If. If that is what you want.”

Nile’s not going to cry again, she’s not, but her eyes well up a little as she nods, her fingers curling around the familiar shape. It means so much, small gestures as it is.

“I think it is,” Nile says, and rests her head against his shoulder again so she doesn’t have to look at him, his hand still warm and soothing on her back.

They stay like that for a while, just breathing against each other, Nile cradling the phone between them. It will be a while yet until she has peace, but until then, there is this.

The fog has started to creep up from the loch when Nile sighs and opens the door to get out.

“I should head back. Are you--” she says, hesitating a moment before adding, “coming?”

Booker smiles at her with his sad eyes. “I don’t think so.”

“I feel like--“

“No, it’s okay, Nile. I’ll come round to it, and Joe and Nicky might as well. But you still need to let us feel it first.”

Nile nods like she understands, then clambers over him and out of the car. She stands next to the still open door when a thought comes to her. She drums her fingers on the roof, once. “Will you still be here in the morning?”

“I’ll stay until the kelpie is gone,” Booker says, and it’s still not quite everything she wants to hear. But it’s what she needed, and that has to be enough.

Nile wanders back to the lodge when she hears voices carrying through the fog. They’re coming from the shore. And she still isn’t armed.

On tiptoes, Nile makes her way down the path she came, which is getting harder and harder through the fog. She can barely see Andy when she approaches the overturned log she left her on, only that Andy is not sitting down anymore. She’s standing up instead, one arm still curled around her middle the other stiff by her side, fingers working a fist open and closed.

She’s muttering something under her breath after what must have been a cry of surprise, and Nile squints through the fog to make out what she’s seeing.

There is something approaching them, and Nile feels herself tense, getting ready to pounce to drag Andy away the way Joe did earlier. But it is not a kelpie.

It is a woman, clad in a dripping white gown, making her way up the shore from the water. She’s slow and a little unsteady on her feet, but unmistakably – it is Quynh.

Andy says a word Nile doesn’t understand, half a shout but steeped in tenderness, and runs towards her, cradles her close. It is nothing like how she held Nile, and if it wasn’t for the fog rendering everything to blurred shapes, Nile would feel like she was overstepping.

“Oh, my heart, my heart, did it work? Are you-“

“I don’t know,” Quynh says, holding on to Andy’s face, eyes drinking in the sight in front of her. “I was drowning, but I wasn’t trapped. I swam, and I nearly froze to death, but I swam and I swam and now I’m here. And so are you, so either I’m free – or this is a dream.”

Andy hugs Quynh impossibly closer, swaying on the spot. “Not a dream, my heart. Not a dream.”

“Are you still-“ Quynh starts. Cuts herself off, when Andy presses their foreheads together. The air smells like saltwater, but it doesn’t taste like rage anymore.

“I’m afraid so,” Andy says, but she says it against Quynh’s lips and then Nile  _ does _ look away. There is love older than most empires on display in front of her, and something about that thought makes it hard to breathe.

“I’m just glad I am back in time,” Quynh says, after a while, and Nile turns back just in time to see a violent shiver rack through her body, “even just another moment with you would have been worth it.”

“My heart,” Andy only whispers, “my heart. Let’s get you inside, and warmed up.”

She bundles Quynh up in her arms and they begin to walk back to the lodge. Scrambling not to be seen spying on them, Nile retreats into the fog. She could follow both of them into the lodge at a casual distance without raising suspicion almost certainly, but something makes her stop when the house comes into view. 

It’s the faces Joe and Nicky made when they saw Quynh on the shore the day before. The reverence in Andy’s demeanour around her. Quynh is her family now, too, she knows, and in what seems to become a strange tradition, Nile has already put herself in harm's way to protect the other woman as a welcome gesture. But this is not getting pulled out of a broken car after a 37-story dive. This feels like she’s crashing a family reunion that’s centuries overdue. Maybe they won’t even notice if she creeps back to Booker for now. 

But the decision does not appear to be hers to make. Joe shows up on the porch, peering into the fog.

“Nile? Nile!” he calls, and Nile doesn’t have it in her to make him look for her.

“I’m here,” she says, and jogs up to him.

“Nile!” Joe beams. “Are you not cold? Come inside, you’re not going to believe who just-“

“No, I know,” Nile says, smiling weakly as he lopes an arm around her shoulders, “Quynh came back.”

“Yes! It worked!”

Joe is jubilant and Nile should be too, she knows, she knows, she- She doesn’t quite know what to feel when Joe leads her into the lodge, where Quynh and Andy are sharing a blanket close to the fire and Nicky is ladling what looks like hot chocolate from a pot into mugs.

They’re all beaming at her, and she has to suppress a shiver, even though everything is warm, so warm.

“Oh look,” Quynh says, “my saviour,” and Nile blushes when Joe laughs and jostles her shoulders. 

“The whole family back together,” Andy says, and winks at her. But it’s when she meets Andy’s eyes that she meets Andy’s eyes, and her challenging eyebrow, that Nile knows she didn’t fool Andy for a second. This  _ is _ her family now, and all the joy and all the pain, they’ll overcome together. “Or are you really gonna let Booker sit outside in the cold?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we are! I don't think this would have solved their problems with Booker and what's yet to come with Quynh *at all*, by the way, but I do believe there are evenings and stretches of peace that they deserve - that _Nile_ deserves - that they worked for with this one.
> 
> I'm still not a hundred percent sure what exactly I was doing with this one, but thank you very much for reading and commenting and leaving kudos on my strange little story. It means a lot <3

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on tumblr (@[morallygreywaren](www.morallygreywaren.tumblr.com)) or in the comments if you want to shout about adjusting to immortality!


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